


Blanks

by QueenAng



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Memory Loss, Other, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23535001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenAng/pseuds/QueenAng
Summary: One of Wheeljack’s inventions backfires and he forgets that he and Starscream are Actually Married.
Relationships: Starscream/Wheeljack
Comments: 8
Kudos: 139





	Blanks

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Actually Married](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22117204) by [valeriange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valeriange/pseuds/valeriange). 



Wheeljack isn’t sure where he is at first. He smells smoke, still hot enough to burn his olfactory sensors. He can feel the paint on his hands bubble with heat, though all the sensors have already gone dead, thankfully. His optics fritz when he tilts his helm to take in his surrounds. A red light is blinking near the ceiling. A siren chirps impatiently every few nanokliks, sounding distant.

He groans and starts to push himself up, his elbow joint briefly faltering. He finally manages to get into something close to a sitting position; it’s hard to tell what he’s doing with how black his optical feed has gone and how many of his sensors are offline.

He feels a sharp jolt in his spark. Whatever weariness had pushed him towards unconsciousness vanishes in an instant. He remembers the feeling of bubbling paint and the smell of smoke; that is far from unfamiliar. But – Primus, is he having a spark attack now? Something foreign envelopes his spark. Worry clouds his mind, worry that wasn’t there before, and it’s followed by a pulse of concern so strong Wheeljack briefly wonders if he’s managed to blow part of his spark out of his chassis.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to deal with the odd feelings for long. A red and grey femme bursts through the lab door and starts shooting out the flames consuming what used to be his work table. A mech follows her in and leans down next to Wheeljack, and then—nothing.

* * *

Wheeljack wakes up with a groan, all his sensors back online.

“You’re an idiot,” a familiar gruff voice says from beside him.

Wheeljack reluctantly onlines his optics, peering to the side to observe Ratchet standing there with his arms crossed in front of his chassis, a permanently deep scowl glowering down at Wheeljack. He preps himself silently for the incoming tirade about proper safety procedures and blah, blah, blah… but Ratchet glowers for a whole three nanokliks without yelling, which isn’t right to begin with.

Wheeljack immediately takes the advantage. “It wasn’t supposed to blow up!”

“ _What_ wasn’t supposed to blow up?” Ratchet retorts.

Wheeljack blanks. He knows this routine well enough – he blows something up, wakes up in Ratchet’s care, Ratchet patches him up, yells, and thwacks him with a wrench if he’s being particularly stubborn. But the specifics…?

“The thing,” Wheeljack says, “that blew up.”

Ratchet stares at him for a long moment. Wheeljack begins to wonder if he’s misremembered the situation. He had been in his lab, hadn’t he? It had been hard to see given the state of his optics, but he’s sure it was his lab… or a lab, at least.

Finally, Ratchet sits down in a chair beside his berth, already pulled close, like someone had already claimed it at one point. “Do you know where you are?”

“A medbay.”

“Where?”

Wheeljack tries to search his memory, and comes up with nothing. He hedges a guess with, “The Ark?”

Ratchet frowns. “You’re in Iacon, Jack.”

Wheeljack shakes his helm. “Nah, that ain’t possible. Iacon fell before we left Cybertron.”

“We’re back on Cybertron. Most of us, anyway.” Ratchet has an odd look in his optics. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

* * *

Ratchet gives him the most basic rundown on the things he’s missing in his glitched memory. The war is over. Decepticons, NAILs, and Autobots are all living together on Cybertron. There’s a united government. He works on Metroplex and the combiners in Iacon and lives in the main government building. The medic refuses to let anything spill about his personal life – something about not wanting to interfere with memories.

Ratchet tells him his memory should reboot soon, within a few cycles. He managed to hit his helm pretty hard when the blast threw him against the back wall of his lab. Wheeljack can only nod, because, yeah, that sounds about right.

He’s let go with a stern warning from the medic to head straight to his hab-suite, which Ratchet had to give him directions to while Wheeljack stared blankly.

Ironhide catches him when he’s not one hallway away from the medbay. He claps a servo down on Wheeljack’s shoulder and peers down at him with a grin. “Is it true?” he asks. “What Ratchet said? You really don’t remember anything?”

Wheeljack shakes his helm again. It’s becoming a familiar gesture.

Ironhide laughs like he’s just heard a joke. “So you thought we were still at war when you woke up? Against the Decepticons?”

“Yeah,” Wheeljack mutters. “Don’t think I’ve quite wrapped my processor around that one yet.”

Ironhide makes a low, amused sound. “And you’re headed back to your hab-suite now?”

“Yeah.”

“That ought to be good.”

Wheeljack pauses. “Why? Do I have to share a bunk with the combiners or something?”

“Or something,” Ironhide says, denta bared in a wide smile. He pushes Wheeljack to begin walking again. “I can’t wait to see your face. Honestly, though, you deserve it, after giving us all _that_ shock—”

“Ironhide!”

The big red mech stops. Wheeljack peers around his bulk to see two femmes, one a flight-frame, walking down the hall. The blue one scowls at Ironhide, who offers a weak shrug in response. “What?” he says. “It’s just a little payback.”

“Ratchet said he’s already in shock,” the flight-frame says. “You shouldn’t pester him more.”

“How many of you did Ratchet comm.?” Wheeljack mutters.

The blue femme turns to him. “It wasn’t to control you, trust me.”

“Then who—?”

“Let’s go, Jackie.” The flight-frame sweeps past Ironhide and the blue femme to take hold of Wheeljack’s arm and guide him down the hall. “I don’t take it you remember where your hab-suite is, anyway.”

“Not a clue,” Wheeljack admits.

She looks at him for a long moment. “I’m Windblade. I guess you don’t remember me either. We didn’t meet until after the war ended.”

“You call me Jackie,” he says.

Windblade looks a little confused at that. “Yeah, I do.”

“We must be close. We’re friends?” he ventures.

“Yes,” Windblade says. “We see each other a lot when I’m working. I’m the delegate from Caminus.”

Wheeljack frowns beneath his mask. Why would an engineer working on combiners frequently cross paths with a colony delegate? His processor begins to hurt as he tries – and fails – to connect seemingly unconnectable dots.

Windblade seems to understand. She says, “Ratchet said you would be confused for now and not to try to explain everything you missed. A lot has happened since the war ended. A lot has changed.”

Windblade leads him up flight after flight of stairs. Wheeljack assumed his hab-suite would be somewhere near the bottom levels, or in the basement itself, right alongside his lab. He’d always stayed in places like that. Instead, now, they end up on the top floor of the building, stopping in front of a grand, sleek grey door.

Windblade gestures to the scanner beside it. “This is you. It will respond to your input.” She pats his shoulder and says, “I hope you feel better soon, Jackie. See you around.”

Wheeljack places his servo against the scanner, expecting it to flash red. It doesn’t, just as Windblade said. The large door slides open, and, after a long pause, Wheeljack steps inside.

He takes one look around and knows for a fact that Windblade must be glitching, and the security system too, because there is no way this is his room.

It’s relatively sleek in design, with nice furniture and stylish tables. Tables that are piled with what are undeniably his work things, because Perceptor once said he was the only mech who could lay things out in such a way and still make sense of what it was. But the energon dispenser in the kitchen is top of the line, and a single bottle of the Vosian high-grade on the shelf is probably worth more than anything he’s ever owned. There are models of various flightcrafts scattered around the room – one on the short table in front of the couch, two acting as bookends for datapads on a shelf – all appearing to be hand-built from various scrap-metals.

No. There is no way this is Wheeljack’s room. He doesn’t do fancy high-grade or top-end appliances. Why would he spend his time between working on combiners and Metroplex building model flightcrafts? None of this makes any sense.

Wheeljack rubs his helm and sighs. It was too late to catch up to Windblade without getting lost again. And he’s so, so tired. Figuring out why his personality glitched so much after the war could be a problem for next cycle.

He walks carefully around the furniture, trying not to disturb anything. He does look at the various datapads lining the shelf as he goes by. Most aren’t surprising – a lot of engineering datapads, a few other sciences scattered in with them. But mixed among them are historical novels, a couple in native Vosian that he can’t even read the titles of.

Vosian high-grade, Vosian novels in the Vosian language. Did he develop some sort of obsession with Vos after the war? He’d only had a passing knowledge of it before Cybertron fell.

Wheeljack decides that’s another mystery for tomorrow. He opens a door, hoping it leads to the berth-room, and almost sighs in relief when he recognizes the frame of a berth.

He stops one step into the room. Wheeljack spent years sleeping on a cot, or in worse conditions than that. It never bothered him much. Apparently, after the war ended, he had decided to splurge on a _gigantic_ berth.

This all seems so wrong. This place is clearly meant for some high-up politician, not a engineer for the combiners.

_Tomorrow’s problem_ , Wheeljack thinks, looking at that berth. Primus, it looks soft. _Tomorrow’s problem._

* * *

Wheeljack dreams.

He’s back in that unfamiliar lab, though back when it was sans smoke and fire everywhere. There are a multitude of metal parts laid out on the table in front of him, though a portion have been shoved aside to make room for a lithe red seeker sitting there.

Wheeljack thinks dream-him is saying something, but now he focuses on the unfamiliar seeker with a too-familiar glint in his red optics. He’s peering at Wheeljack like a predator, though he’s swinging his legs like he’s feigning disinterest. He’s pretty; far too pretty to be looking at Wheeljack of all mechs like _that_.

Finally, the seeker says, “And this needs to be done tonight, _why_?”

Dream-Wheeljack pauses. “Well, it doesn’t really. Just thought I could show Windblade” – the seeker rolls his optics – “tomorrow and see what she thinks.”

“I have a better idea.” The seeker reaches out and grabs the front of Wheeljack’s chassis, hooking his claws in and dragging him between his spread legs. Dream-Wheeljack makes no protests at this treatment. The seeker leans forward enough to nearly touch his olfactory ridge against Wheeljack’s. “Why don’t we go back to our quarters for the night instead?”

Wheeljack can feel his fuel pump hammering. He would have jumped at that opportunity right there, right then; who cared about a fragging part when he had a seeker wrapping his legs around his waist? But his dream-counterpart cocks an optical ridge instead and says, “I dunno. This part might be _really_ important…”

The seeker feigns a hurt look, red optics wide. “And I’m not important?”

“You’re just as important as Metroplex. And just as high-maintenance too.”

The seeker places a servo over his spark. “That hurts, Jackie. Should I worry about you leaving me in favor of Metroplex now?”

“Well, he does probably have a big—”

“If you finish that sentence, I _will_ formally exile you from Cybertron, its colonies, and every planet on the Council of Worlds.”

Wheeljack laughs and leans forward to rest his helm against the seeker’s. Two red arms curl around his neck and haul him close. He can feel the low thrum of the seeker’s spark against his own chassis, the heat of his flight engine against his frame. Wheeljack leans forward and the seeker bends back until he’s flush against the table, Wheeljack’s frame pinning him down. His wings fan out at either side of him, practically begging to be touched.

The seeker runs a fleeting kiss along Wheeljack’s mask. He taps it with a deadly pointed claw, though Dream-Wheeljack doesn’t flinch. “This needs to go.”

His dream-self transforms the mask back without hesitation, and that’s when Wheeljack knows something is wrong. The seeker is hot, sure, and Wheeljack would probably trade an arm and a leg for a tumble in the berth with him, but taking off his mask was a hard no. The scars underneath aren’t exactly something pretty to look at – not that Wheeljack had that going for him anyway – and he didn’t need a one-night stand’s horrified shock or degrading pity or intrusive questions.

But this seeker does none of those. The clawed servo, still raised to Wheeljack’s face, traces a gentle line down one of the scars. He tilts his jaw down and brings Wheeljack’s lips to his, kissing him without the hesitation of unfamiliar lovers.

Wheeljack jolts awake suddenly. His engine is practically growling in his chassis, his frame running hot enough to draw up condensation. He ought to feel exposed, having dreamt of removing his mask in front of someone else so intimately, but instead he just feels… hot.

Wheeljack lays back down, trying to focus on slowing his fuel pump back down and cooling his frame. He offlines his optics again, and tries not to think of pretty red seekers with devious optics.

* * *

It happens again when he’s making energon that morning. One moment he’s filling a cube at the dispenser – not quite sure how he knows how to work it as well as he does – and the next moment, the day suddenly isn’t as bright, and he isn’t as alone.

Cybertron’s sun faintly peeks through the open window, where the red seeker lands on a wide balcony. He steps inside, condensation gleaming on his plating, the sun creating a halo behind him.

There are two cubes of energon in Wheeljack’s servos, one of which he hands to the seeker as he sweeps by. For a moment, Wheeljack thinks he’s just going to leave, but he turns back around on Wheeljack’s other side and leans into him. Wheeljack feels a wing flick against his back, then lower as the seeker’s engine settles to a peaceful thrum.

They settle into the couch, Wheeljack’s mask once again drawn back without hesitation to sip at his energon. The seeker grabs a datapad lying on the short table in front of them and onlines it.

When Wheeljack comes back to the present, he’s still standing at the energon dispenser, and he can’t help but look expectantly to the wide window and balcony showing the rising sun.

* * *

They’re memories, Wheeljack pieces together. Ratchet had said something about more coming back when he was dozing off or sleeping. It hadn’t been a dream, that scene in the lab, just as the settling in for morning energon together hadn’t been a daydream.

Being with a seeker explained the Vosian things around the apartment. What it didn’t explain was where in the Pit Wheeljack found a seeker to court. Those that survived the fall of Vos followed Starscream to join Megatron’s ranks. Wheeljack figures some might have abandoned the war and waited it out as NAILs, but then he doubted a NAIL would look at his scars the way his seeker had, with a sort of sad understanding. And NAILs, as far as he knows, don’t have a need for clawed servos.

He doesn’t recognize the frame in his memories, but seekers are finnicky things that change at the drop of a hat. Still, there are a few he can immediately rule out. Sunstorm is apparently dead, Thundercracker is stationed on Earth, and Starscream was – quite infamously – Megatron’s favorite toy.

He spends most of his day wandering around the building, trying to piece things together. Occasionally something will trigger a memory – usually brief, usually pertaining to his seeker. Meetings in an office about the combiners. A make-out session in a storage closet.

He’s passing the medbay, glancing inside the open doorway, when another memory hits.

It’s the red seeker laying in a medical berth this time, not him. Judging from the scorched plating of his shoulder and the fresh welds marring it, he has recently been shot. His servo is clasped in Wheeljack’s, and he’s saying something sarcastically from the way his optics roll as he speaks, but Wheeljack’s quiet voice cuts him off effectively nonetheless. “I almost lost you.”

The seeker stops, his expression slipping into something more neutral. “But I’m fine. The shot missed my spark. They caught him.” He scoffs. “Besides, Megatron spent the better part of a war trying to kill me and failing. No way some no-name Autobot-wannabe takes me out.”

Wheeljack doesn’t look at his seeker when he says, “Bond with me.”

The seeker’s red optics go wide. “What?”

Wheeljack looks up. “I almost lost you today. I thought my spark stopped when I saw you fall. And it made me realize how much I don’t want to lose you. Not today, or tomorrow. I want you with me, forever. Even if you’re in a meeting on Caminus and I’m here with Metroplex, I want you with me. So bond with me. Be my conjunx, Star.”

Wheeljack comes back to the present when he hits the ground outside the medbay.

Almost immediately, Ratchet is at his side, pulling him back up to his pedes, asking him if he’s okay, what happened to him.

“Starscream,” he says slowly. “My conjunx is Starscream.”

Ratchet nods and waits.

“That’s not possible,” Wheeljack continues.

“Why not?”

_He’s a Decepticon. Pretty sure he tried to kill me a couple times_. “Megatron,” is all Wheeljack says.

“Megatron is gone,” Ratchet replies. “Besides, there’s an old bylaw from well before the war that says you can’t raise a servo against your conjunx, and I’m fairly certain those two spent the war more concerned with offlining each other than any Autobot.”

Still… “I took Megatron’s conjunx,” Wheeljack says, right before he crashes.

* * *

This time, when Wheeljack wakes up, he isn’t alone in the medbay, and it isn’t Ratchet hovering beside him.

Starscream leans back in the chair beside Wheeljack’s berth, his pedes propped up on the bedside table, a datapad in his lap. He doesn’t look like he did during the war, but the gleam in his optics is much the same, though muted.

“What can I say?” Starscream says. “I always knew I was unforgettable.”

“You were here,” Wheeljack murmurs, “before I woke up the first time.”

Starscream seems to falter, his smirk slipping from his faceplates. “For a time, yes. Ratchet said he was uncertain as to how much you remember, and – how did he put it – ‘waking up to the Decepticon second-in-command leering over you’ wouldn’t be helpful.”

“Yeah,” Wheeljack agrees. “It would’ve been bad. I’d’ve seen your pretty face and think I’d died and gone to the Well.”

“Oh, wow, smart _and_ funny. If we weren’t already bonded, I’d propose right here,” Starscream drawls, though he’s smiling as he says it.

“You’d just copy me like that?” Wheeljack accuses. “Hack.”

“What can I say? I’m fond of the dramatic.”

There’s a pause, and Wheeljack sweeps his gaze quickly down Starscream’s frame. There is no doubt he’s the red seeker from Wheeljack’s memories. There’s an air of familiarity and comfort that surrounds him, mingling peacefully with Wheeljack’s own field, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s the conjunx bond. It had been Starscream’s fear he felt after the explosion.

“You know,” Wheeljack says slowly, “I’m still missing quite a few memories about us.”

Starscream hums noncommittally. “Ratchet says they’ll return with two cycles. Your memory processors are still rebooting. No damage.”

“But it’s full of blanks right now,” Wheeljack protests. “I can’t remember important things, like our first kiss. I think you’re going to have to show me how it went.”

After that, things went blissfully well, right up until Ratchet returned and started yelling. “Get off his berth or I’ll give you a reason to need your own! There is absolutely no canoodling in my medbay!”


End file.
